YouSaid · the spoken record

Frank Bruni

lines on the record: 58
first: 2024-05-02
most recent: 2024-05-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“No, absolutely. I mean, I was thinking and I write about this in the book. We talk a lot about Trump, and Ron DeSantis ultimately wasn't successful in what he most wanted, which was the Republican presidential nomination. And after that, the presidency, in some ways to me, he's the most emblematic politician of our era. If you think about what he claims as his distinctions as governor of Florida, he talks about all the people to whom he's delivered a comeuppance. He has this enemies list and he works his way through it. Disney, the prosecutor in Tampa who dared to speak up for abortion rights and on and on. It's like this tote board that he's like crossing off, like I got that enemy, got that enemy, got the next enemy. When did we become a country in which a successful politician signature phrase, which is his, is Florida is where woke goes to die? The fact that the phrase death, I mean that there were a variation.”
2024-05-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 578 — Frank Bruni · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She hates the people you hate even better than you hate them. And we have more and more politicians saying, vote for me because I hate the people you hate as well as anybody else. I'm going to torment them better than anybody else. Look at, I mean, I think...”
2024-05-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 578 — Frank Bruni · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And watching what's going on on the Columbia campus and on other campuses. And this is really tough stuff because free speech is very important. Antisemitism is unacceptable. Like wading through all this, making sure we're protecting everybody's liberty, making sure we're being true to all of our principles that sometimes seem to be intention. This is tough to deal with. I'm really trying to, no one's going to share that. They're going to share a look at those horrible anti-Semites, or they're going to share, look at these people tramping on students' rights and telling us we don't have free speech. That's what they're going to share.”
2024-05-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 578 — Frank Bruni · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct, correct. They encourage us to be more separate and not to seek common ground. You go to social media, you see your viewpoint validated, you then kind of marinate in it even more than you were, and you cease to hear any dissenting voices or to believe them. But I think social media also asks you to engage in everything at the hottest temperature possible. That's a whole other problem, and I think we give that too little recognition. It's the anger thing, right? If I go on”
2024-05-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 578 — Frank Bruni · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, there's all sorts of science and studies that show that nothing goes viral on social media and nothing gets clicks, nothing gets shares like something that is an expression of pure anger. And so we have this platform, this whatever you want to call social media that encourages us to be angry, that rewards us when we're angry, incentivizes it. And I think that has done enormous, enormous damage. Social media, I think, is doing damage in more ways than we typically even realize. So there's a lot of talk about the algorithms. Absolutely true, absolutely a big concern.”
2024-05-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 578 — Frank Bruni · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's true. But so maybe I was uniquely sensitive to it. Also, I was kind of living as we all are in the Trump era. I mean, you know, Think encountered a grievance politician of that intensity. I don't think we've ever had a grievance presidency to rival his. And that, I think, has been an accelerant of this corrosive culture of ours, but I think it's also a reflection of it. I think he was elected because at this moment in time, he embodied and he communicated a kind of fury that was pervasive in America.”
2024-05-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 578 — Frank Bruni · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The analogy isn't perfect, but one of the essential parts of my journey after I had my eye stroke and was told that I would live forevermore with the 20% chance of going blind, which I guess is the case even as we sit here now. One of the tough things was not to feel angry, like that question why me. One of the tough things was not to kind of just descend into self-pity. After I got through that as I continued to do the sort of political analysis and commentary I do, and I began, you know, looking at the country through, I guess, literally a different set of eyes, I realized that we have a civic challenge that sort of parallels that personal challenge. I see way too many of us, and I'd be curious to know if this resonates for you, who are political discussions begin with how I've been wronged and what I owed. They proceed from a place of kind of anger.”
2024-05-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 578 — Frank Bruni · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Life is good. Thank you for asking. My vision has been stable. It's funny. I mean, I still struggle just this morning, I think, just because I slept badly last night. I was trying to do some reading and things were getting sort of swimmy and wobbly, but I kind of know how to take a break and forge on. And I'm lucky. Things are good.”
2024-05-02 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 578 — Frank Bruni · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source